God Invites Us to Talk With Him

You may not have heard the news, but you are looking a published writer. And I’m not talking about the sermon blog that I publish for myself. I mean I had a story published in the Altoona Mirror the other week. (genuine print medium, also a dying medium but I digress). I received a check in the mail for my efforts. Several people called me on the phone and others said they read it. Their reactions ranged from effusive praise to simply “I read that thing of yours.” A couple people asked for my autograph which encouraged my vanity all the more. I called Barnes and Noble and offered to do a newspaper article signing but they said they don’t do those and would I please stop calling.

That first moment of seeing my story and name in print, and then later having others see it . . . I gotta tell you, it felt good. It’s been a couple weeks now and nobody is talking about it anymore, so I’m bringing it up again. I know that the buzz won’t last. And that elusive good feeling a writer gets won’t last either.

Steve Martin said on the Oscars, “To write is to live forever,” and then he deadpanned, “ The man who wrote that is dead.”

Which begs the question, “If you want that buzz why don’t you just write some other stuff and get it published?”

Because it’s work, that’s why. I’ve listened to real professional writers talk about their writing. They may use words like inspiration and craft but the word they use most is work. It’s work.

Let’s play a little word association – what do think of when you hear the word prayer? What words come to mind? God. Jesus. Talk. Inspire. These are all appropriate and true words. But I also want to say this - prayer is work.

“Prayer is an unnatural activity,” Bill Hybels notes. It just not something most of us do with ease. We have to try for it. We have to work at it.

When we are born into the world, some of us need to be reminded to breathe – we might even need a slap. So just because we need to be reminded to pray doesn’t mean this isn’t vital for life.

Bono, lead singer for U2, asks “How can I sing about love when I am never home?” Likewise, how can we say we believe in God and never pray?

“When you pray. . .” Jesus says. Jesus assumes that we will. If you have any notion of following the way of Jesus, if you have any notion of knowing God, you will pray. It won’t be a question of if but when.

One of the reasons we have difficulty praying is the power that the visible world has over us. My son asked me just the other night, “If you had to be either blind or deaf, which would you be?” It took me about three seconds to say, deaf. Because the visible world seems to be so crucial to defining reality for me. And yet the Word of God speaks of that which is invisible, the Kingdom of God, ruled by a God who is invisible.

He invades the visible. For the Israelites wandering in the wilderness, he came in burning bushes and pillars of cloud. He instructed them to offer sacrifice, continual sacrifice at the door of the tent of meeting between God and Israel,

“Where I will meet with you, to speak to you there.” Exodus 29.42


Jesus cautions us that our prayers are not performances for others to hear. We are not judged by how spiritual we sound or even if we can string a coherent sentence together. Some of the best prayers are “groans of the spirit too deep for words.” Jesus counsels us to go to our secret place to talk with the Father who invades the visible in the secret places.

Time and Place

Time and place are two steps that can take that will allow you to make great progress toward intimate, ongoing conversation with the Father.

Find the time that works for you. Many of us are best in the morning. We are larks who are ready to sing and think and talk in the morning. So carve out some time during this best time for you in the morning, before work, before school. Before the hundred monkeys of your thoughts and plans for the day start jumping up and down screaming for action. Others of us are night owls, so trying to talk with God in the morning will go about as well as when you talk to your family or coworkers in the morning – no one wants that. Carve out time in the afternoon, evening, or at bedtime to meet with the Father.

“But whenever you pray go to your room and shut the door and pray. . .”

Find the place that works for you. It has to be a place free of distractions, a place where you don’t feel compelled to do anything except pray and be with God. “Your room” may be the laundry room, the office, a public library or park, or the inside of your car, but it should be a place that you can go to consistently.

A Pattern for Prayer

“Pray then in this way:”

The Lord’s Prayer is not meant to be a magic formula but rather a model of prayer. Hybels lifts up a pattern found in words of Jesus in the Lord’s Prayer that should be followed for almost all of our conversations with God.

The Pattern is A C T S - Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, and Supplication.

Adoration is addressing God with what is right and good. It is seeing and saying about God what is true. Its Moses removing his shoes because he was on holy ground before a mighty God. It is Mary lifting up a praise song for what God promised through her. It speaking into the invisible what is visible to us by faith.

“Our Father who is in the heavens, holy is your name. . .”

Hybels notes that adoration, like prayer, is foreign to many people. It is crucial that we ask for help even in this. I attribute this prayer to C.S. Lewis. I’ve found it helpful:

Lord, help me to see you as you really are, and not just as I imagine you to be.

The Psalmists call us to magnify the Lord together. When we magnify something we make it bigger. A magnifying glass looks at small things and helps the human eye see them bigger. Could it be that in our eyes God is small and needs magnified, but in reality God is big and its our eyes that aren’t seeing correctly. It’s like looking through the wrong end of a telescope or a pair of binoculars. Things in view are larger than they appear!

An honest effort at adoring God in prayer will help us see the greatness of God and that in turn will inform our prayers.

Confession is the most underused and underappreciated took in our spiritual arsenal. Jesus teaches us that clearly sin is the biggest obstacle that stands between us and God. Even and especially as Christians born into new life through the grace of Jesus, unconfessed sin is a barrier that inhibits the flow of the Spirit in us. Confess specifically and ask for power over sin in your life. Confess so that sin does not trouble and weaken your relationship with Jesus your Friend.

Thanksgiving is expressing gratitude to God for all that God has done. Thanksgiving blesses God and it changes us. It opens our eyes to the simple gifts of life. It draws our focus outward, off of our small, whining selves, and into the vast expanse of the kingdom and the great needs of the world.

Supplication is asking of God. Dallas Willard says that asking is the key that unlocks the spiritual world. Asking not only moves God but it moves other people as well. We continue to be surprised when someone gets something unexpected. We ask them, “How did you get that?” “I asked for it,” is the answer that comes to us like a miracle.

“You do not have because you do not ask.” James 4.2

Remember, when we work we only accomplish what we can. When we pray, God works, and accomplishes what it in his power to accomplish, which is a lot.

If I want my children to be safe at school that day, I pray about it. If I have bills to pay and I’m not sure if I have enough, I pray about it. If I know of a relationship that is going through a rough time, I pray for them. If someone is sick, I pray to the God who heals.

There is a lot more that could be said in this area of what to ask for in prayer. Prayer is not merely asking for what I want. God is not the cosmic butler or handyman. And yet, it might surprise of how much we want to happen in the universe is what God wants too. Dallas Willard counsels to pray about what matters to us. When we start here, then God will enlarge our hearts and our circle of interests will grow with that.

Remember, we are talking with God. In Willard’s words, we are

“talking with God about what we are doing together.” Prayer is work, but work that matters, now and forever.


Let’s talk with God about what we are doing together here.